Report says 10 million Latino voters could be disenfranchised, but does the math add up?

A report released by the Advancement Project this week claimed that Voter I.D. laws, proof of citizenship voter registration requirements, and voter purges in combined 23 states (shown above) could potentially disenfranchise over 10 million Latino voters.

This report finds that 23 states currently have legal barriers that disproportionately impact voter registration and participation by Latino citizens. These obstacles could deter or prevent more than 10 million Latino citizens from registering and voting in the 2012 elections.

That’s a lot of votes, especially when considering that the number of eligible Hispanic voters in the U.S. is 21.3 million and the margin of victory in 2008 presidential election was little under seven million votes.

So how did the authors of the report come up with the 10 million voters number?

They basically added up all of the Hispanic citizens of voting age for the 23 states in questions and claimed that all of them could be disenfranchised. Every single one. Including the 3.2 million of Hispanic voters who previously voted in 2010.

Katherine Culliton-González, one of the authors of the report, explained to the Houston Chronicle that the reason the report accounted for all eligible Hispanic voters is that these laws and purges “not only affect people are directly impacted,” but rather they have “discriminatory effect on the community.”

Just take Texas for example – Texas alone accounts for 4.37 million of these potentially disenfranchised voters. The number of voting age Hispanic citizens in Texas is 4.37 million. By Advancement Project’s calculations, enacting the Voter ID laws could potentially disenfranchise all Hispanic voters in Texas.

(Advancement Project/Segregating American Citizenship)

A panel of three federal judges struck down the Texas Voter ID law last month due to potential discrimination against the Hispanic and Black voters, but the numbers provided by the DOJ were more realistic.

The Advancement Project is aware of these figures as it included them in their report.

One of the sources referred to by the report was a letter to the Texas Secretary of State written by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez that states that “over 600,000 registered voters [in Texas] do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by Department of Public Safety (DPS) – and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic.”

When addressing the minorities that would potentially be disenfranchised by the Texas Voter I.D. law, the Advancement Project report stated that “approximately 401,000 Latinos and 93,000 Blacks live in 127 Texas counties without access to an ID-issuing office. Compared to other racial or ethnic groups, the Latino community has a high level of poverty and relies heavily upon public transportation to get to these offices.”

These numbers are far from 4.37 million that were considered as potential disenfranchised voters in the final tally.

It should also be noted that this tally is for the 2012 elections, yet it includes states whose Voter I.D. laws won’t be in effect in time for the election. These states are Texas, Alabama and Rhode Island and account for almost 4.5 million voters included in the final tally. Similarly, the final tally included North Carolina, whose voter ID law was vetoed last year.

“The reason that North Carolina is included is that it has asked for access to federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database, which is federal immigration data, specifically to prepare voter rolls. It hasn’t done that yet. We certainly hope that it does not, but it’s a place where we feel Latino voters can be intimidated very close to the election,” Culliton-González said during a press conference call.

Texas, in addition to using Social Security Administration database, has also asked for access to SAVE database to purge their voter rolls, Culliton-González pointed out during our interview, counting it as another reason as to why the Advancement Project decided to include Texas in their report.

Even if the Hispanic citizens are “not personally targeted,” such action by state government could possibly deter them from voting, she told Houston Chronicle.The Advancement Project stands by its calculations, in fact, Culliton-González called the 10 million figure a “conservative estimate,” because the report only focuses on the 23 states.

The report’s intent was to send a message to the states included to think of what impact their laws, requirements, and purges actually have not just on individual voters but on communities overall.

The issue of Voter I.D. laws has been a sensitive topic on both side of the aisle in Texas. While Republicans liked Ted Cruz claim that the laws help protect the minorities from having their vote stolen through voter fraud, the Democrats like Rep. Charlie Gonzalez argue that the laws discriminate against minorities who have a hard time meeting the requirement put forth in the law.